Law Commons^™

Jurisdiction And The Internet: Returning To Traditional Principles To Analyze Network-Mediated Contacts, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

Courts have been evaluating the issue of personal jurisdiction based on Internet or "network-mediated" contacts for some time. The U.S. Supreme Court has remained silent on this issue, permitting the federal appeals courts to develop standards for determining when personal jurisdiction based on network-mediated contacts is appropriate. Unfortunately, the circuit approaches - which emphasize a website's "interactivity" and "target audience" - are flawed because they are premised on an outdated view of Internet activity as uncontrollably ubiquitous. This view has led courts to depart from traditional jurisdictional analysis and impose elevated and misguided jurisdictional standards. This Article argues that courts …

Sovereignty, Not Due Process: Personal Jurisdiction Over Nonresident, Alien Defendants, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The Due Process Clause with its focus on a defendant's liberty interest has become the key, if not only, limitation on a court's exercise of personal jurisdiction. This due process jurisdictional limitation is universally assumed to apply with equal force to alien defendants as to domestic defendants. With few exceptions, scholars do not distinguish between the two. Neither do the courts. Countless cases assume that foreigners have all the rights of United States citizens to object to extraterritorial assertions of personal jurisdiction.

But is this assumption sound? This Article explores the uncritical assumption that the same due process considerations apply …

Jurisdiction And The Internet: Returning To Traditional Principles To Analyze Network-Mediated Contacts, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Courts have been evaluating the issue of personal jurisdiction based on Internet or "network-mediated" contacts for some time. The U.S. Supreme Court has remained silent on this issue, permitting the federal appeals courts to develop standards for determining when personal jurisdiction based on network-mediated contacts is appropriate. Unfortunately, the circuit approaches-which emphasize a Web site's "interactivity" and "target audience" -are flawed because they are premised on an outdated view of Internet activity as uncontrollably ubiquitous. This view has led courts to depart from traditional jurisdictional analysis and impose elevated and misguided jurisdictional standards. This article argues that courts should reinstitute …

What The Shutts Opt-Out Right Is And What It Ought To Be, Brian Wolfman, Alan B. Morrison

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article discusses the ramifications of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797 (1985), regarding the right of an absent class member to opt out of a class action. The article addresses both the current prevailing understanding of Shutts, which is based on the personal jurisdiction strain of due process jurisprudence, and what the authors believe is a more useful understanding, based on the property rights strain of due process jurisprudence. As an addendum to the article, the authors propose a new civil procedure rule governing class actions that would implement …